Is it worth upgrading the charging station?

[Vinc]

Hi! I have been using a Bosch EL-51253 (30 Amp) charging station for the past couple of years and it has worked great with my Fiat 500e and BMW i3.

Since the Model 3 charges at 32 Amp, not 40 like the other Teslas, it seems that this station should be just fine with a SAE J1772 adapter and there is no need to upgrade to the Tesla Wall Connector. Am I correct, or is there any other metric that would justify the upgrade?

Thanks!

 

[electracity]

I think you are correct in all your assumptions. The only slight downside is needing to use the J1772.

Save you charger upgrade budget for the car that will eventually replace your model 3

 

[hjelmn]

Really depends on how low your battery gets on a typical day. I decided to upgrade from a NEMA 14-50 to the TWC to get the extra 16A. For me its worth it as there are days where I could run into range issues. But I live in the desert southwest so that is a little different than LA.

 

[North75]

Hi! I have been using a Bosch EL-51253 (30 Amp) charging station for the past couple of years and it has worked great with my Fiat 500e and BMW i3.

Since the Model 3 charges at 32 Amp, not 40 like the other Teslas, it seems that this station should be just fine with a SAE J1772 adapter and there is no need to upgrade to the Tesla Wall Connector. Am I correct, or is there any other metric that would justify the upgrade?

Thanks!

The LR model 3 charges at 48A with a Tesla Wall Connector.
It might be debatable if you need 48A, but there is a benefit for those that do.
32A is the limit of the mobile charger that comes with the car.

 

[shrspeedblade]

Use your existing EVSE for a while, say 6 months. I would bet you find it works just fine, as in the grand scheme of things reaching your charge set point at 3am instead of 2am will hardly matter.

I'm using my juicebox I used with my Volt, I haven't even pulled the Tesla charger out of the bag and who knows when I ever will. Using the adapter is cake.

 

[gambit48]

In LA, with the amount of Superchargers and just regular chargers around, I don't see the point in upgrading. The 32 amps from the mobile charger is plenty fast enough for most use cases. There are Superchargers around in case you have some day where you run it all day long, and need to be back on the road in an hour. Going to a wall connector isn't gonna be fast enough to make a difference in that extreme case.

 

[eprosenx]

Others have covered this well. That charging station should work great as-is, but it all depends on how much range you need to recover each night and how fast you feel you need to do it. The one thing I might add would be that if you have time of use pricing and you need to fit your charging into a shorter window at night then you might want to consider a faster charging setup.

Going from that charger to using the UMC Gen 2 that came with your car on say a NEMA 14-50 would only upgrade you from 30 amps to 32 amps. If you did a "Wall Connector" on a 60a or larger circuit your Model 3 Long Range would be able to charge at 48 amps. Depending on what you feel your needs are this might be worth it to you. (cost to upgrade will depend on the size of wire currently installed and whether your main electrical service has enough remaining capacity)

As others have suggested- It probably makes sense to give it a shot and see how it works for you... 30a is still a good amount of power to give it a try.

 

[Vinc]

Thank you for the very helpful insight! I will keep the Bosch station for now and I will report back if I see the need to upgrade.

 

[JCLeonard]

We have a GE EVSE that works great for our Leaf. We had planned to use it with the Model 3 but when we tested it with a friend's car it would not start charging. We tested with a second Model 3 with no luck. Tesla support was miffed and we never figured it out. This same EVSE worked to charge two different Model Xs. Strange.
Ultimately, I ended up adding a HPWC next to the GE J1772 EVSE.

 

[eprosenx]

Thank you for the very helpful insight! I will keep the Bosch station for now and I will report back if I see the need to upgrade.

Oh and one more thing: A lot of folks with a J1772 charger at home end up buying a second J1772 to Tesla adapter so they can keep one in the car at all times and one with the J1772 station at home. It just makes it easier to plug/unplug every day without having to stow the adapter.

We have a GE EVSE that works great for our Leaf. We had planned to use it with the Model 3 but when we tested it with a friend's car it would not start charging. We tested with a second Model 3 with no luck. Tesla support was miffed and we never figured it out. This same EVSE worked to charge two different Model Xs. Strange.
Ultimately, I ended up adding a HPWC next to the GE J1772 EVSE.

Interesting. I have seen similar posts here in the forums about the Model 3 not working with the Siemens Versicharge. This makes me wonder if the Model 3 has an issue that makes it not compatible with some charging makes/models. We should push Tesla to determine root cause on these if there are issues across the entire series of chargers and not just a single defective unit. Even if it comes down to Tesla discovering some design issues with these chargers it would be good to know root cause (in order to know who to harass about fixing it). ;-)

Siemens versicharge not charging model 3

 

[ewoodrick]

Hi! I have been using a Bosch EL-51253 (30 Amp) charging station for the past couple of years and it has worked great with my Fiat 500e and BMW i3.

Since the Model 3 charges at 32 Amp, not 40 like the other Teslas, it seems that this station should be just fine with a SAE J1772 adapter and there is no need to upgrade to the Tesla Wall Connector. Am I correct, or is there any other metric that would justify the upgrade?

Thanks!

If it works for you, then no. Since it seems to have worked for you....

 

[Rocky_H]

Thank you for the very helpful insight! I will keep the Bosch station for now and I will report back if I see the need to upgrade.

I think some people perceive this as tied to the wrong thing. They think, "My car has this kind of charging capability, so I need this speed of charging."
But this issue of what charging speed isn't really related to the car's capabilities versus to your own driving distances with how many miles you need to be able to fill overnight at home. So if you do pretty short distances and don't have long commutes and quick turnarounds to other long drives, you just don't need very fast charging speed, even if you did have a car that could take 200A of charging current.

 

[Glamisduner]

What do you guys recommend if you have a 82-92 mile commute? I'm currently planning to get a 14-50 as it is more versatile for other things in the future.

 

[shrspeedblade]

Just use the Tesla charger. If that’s your round trip it will only take 4 hours to top off at night or in 8 hours if you really need to move closer lol!

I’m just getting used to this: at 80% you can go 250 miles on short notice. Then you just supercharge. Range anxiety quickly starts to fade away.

 

[alexgerber]

Thank you for the very helpful insight! I will keep the Bosch station for now and I will report back if I see the need to upgrade.

Did it work for you?

I have the same charging station and it doesn't work on my Model 3 while I'm not having any issues with it when I charge other non Tesla electric cars. I get ""Charge equipment problem, try a different cable".

 

[Vinc]

Did it work for you?

I have the same charging station and it doesn't work on my Model 3 while I'm not having any issues with it when I charge other non Tesla electric cars. I get ""Charge equipment problem, try a different cable".

Interesting, I ended up getting a used MS instead of the M3 and the station is working without any issues. Make sure that you are firmly pushing the plug in, the first time I tried I got a similar error because the plug was not all the way in. Other than that, you might want to try the adaptor at a different station to rule out that the problem might be there.